


Wild Goose Chase

by trashofalltrades



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cat Puns, increasingly ridiculous excuses for how one loses an eye, semi crack fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashofalltrades/pseuds/trashofalltrades
Summary: Fury keeps giving fake excuses for what happened to his eye. When Coulson finally finds out what really happened, he won't let Fury live it down.





	Wild Goose Chase

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to stardians for screaming about Captain Marvel with me and coming up with fic ideas

The first time someone asked Fury how he lost his eye, the answer was provided for him. He just had to play along.

Agent Coulson had come into his office soon after “the incident” with updates as well as a box of glass eyes. “I heard a Kree burned your eye out because you refused to give up the Tesseract,” he said, giving him an awed smile.

Fury just gave him a casual shrug and said, “I can neither confirm nor deny,” which only seemed to make him more impressed.

 

 

The second time he had to explain was when he went to go visit former director Carter.

She had a built-in detector for bullshit, but seemed to accept the explanation that it was from an attack by a hostile combatant, which was _technically_ true. Goose had been hostile. Peggy had enough scars of her own to know that sometimes missions didn’t always end well for you personally, and so she simply nodded and moved on.

 

 

It got easier from there, and at the first team meeting after the incident, Fury went in prepared.

When it was his turn to speak, he stood up, pointing to his temporary eye patch. “I think I should address elephant in the room.”

Four hands shot up with a chorus of “What the hell happeneds.”

“Well,” he started, looking out the window in an attempt to look dramatic, “it was shrapnel. I was trying to protect a Skrull child.”

Awed whispers followed until Coulson raised his hand and said, “I thought you said it was from protecting the Tesseract?”

Fury smiled. “Who says it can’t be both?”

Coulson’s eyes narrowed “What’s the real reason?”

“The real reason?” Fury heaved a sigh before he said “High speed chase. Nearly lost much more than an eye.”

“Really?”

“No, actually I just braked too hard and my dashboard hula girl hit me in the face.”

The room broke out into laughter and they went back to discussing S.H.I.E.L.D. business, the topic forgotten.

If he could keep stringing them along, turn it into a game or mystery of sorts, then no one would ever have to know.

 

 

Two weeks in, the betting pool started. The agents were deeply divided. The older ones with less time to devote to such office speculation assumed it was just something he didn’t want to talk about. People got injured all the time, especially in their line of work.

The newer agents, on the other hand, egged on by Coulson, knew it had to be something embarrassing and were always willing to share suggestions. Too much pepper spray. A sparring match gone wrong. Fireworks. A rogue attack by a blockbuster employee. Method acting for a performance in King Lear. A jealous pirate. Coulson was personally betting on a misunderstanding with that Danvers woman Fury had been with.

They kept pestering him about it, Fury only responding with, “Don’t. Trust. Anyone.” in as gravely a voice as he could muster.

Maybe that would change the betting pool odds.

 

 

A few months after Carol Danvers had left, Coulson walked past Fury’s office on his way to deliver a memo, hearing Fury speak in baby talk to Goose. “Who’s a sweet kitty. Who’s S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best undercover agent? You are Goosey, yeah you are. You gonna take down some bad guys? Scratch them up a bunch too?”

Coulson froze, eyes widening. Was it…the cat? It was certainly embarrassing. Certainly implausible. But he needed to be sure.

Phase one of seeing whether Goose had maimed the hand that fed him was to show up at the office with a “beware of cat” sign he bought from the pet boutique downtown that was typically geared towards middle aged white women.

He presented it to Fury at the end of the day, doing his best not to laugh. “You two are so close, I figured a gag gift was warranted,” he said, handing it over to Fury with a smile.

Fury eyed him with his good eye before looking down at the sign in his hands. He nodded. “I’ll hang it on my door.”

“Seriously? You don’t have to I just thought it was funny.”

Fury raised an eyebrow. “No, it’s only fair to give people the proper warning.”

Coulson was sure enough that he put money on “pet sitting gone wrong” in the betting pool. Fury liked joking about his attack cat and sign entirely too much for the cat to not have violent tendencies. Phase two would be confirmation. It was time for a bonding night.

After much convincing, Fury had finally agreed to go see a show with him and take time to socialize out of work. After all, didn’t Fury want to be the wise, older mentor, providing friendship and advice for his trainee?

Fury bitched about it, but he met Coulson outside of the theater at 8 p.m. where Coulson surprised him with a ticket to see _Cats_.

Fury just stared at the ticket and then back at him.

“Really?”

“What,” Coulson said with a shrug. “It’s culture. Don’t you like the song Memory?”

Fury made it to intermission before turning towards Coulson and asking, “Does everyone think I’m this obsessed with cats?”

“Maybe. But I think that you have a complicated past with them. Some recent medical issues, perhaps?”

Fury let out a groan. “You could have just told me you knew what actually happened.”

“Oh, but this was more fun.” He checked his watch. “And congrats, you lasted an hour longer than I thought you would.”

Fury  shook his head. “Look I know it sounds ridiculous, but Goose is a Flerken—she just looks like a cat. Her stomach’s like a black hole. Also she’s got tentacles. And yes, she scratched my eye.”

“If that’s true why the hell does she sleep in your office?”

Fury frowned. “Goose didn’t know what she was doing, it’s not her fault. She’s a good cat—I could never give her away.”

“Riiiiight. Well this was fun. Interesting explanation, though our ideas were so much better.”

“Oh I’ve heard. How much are you going to make off of this?”

Coulson took in his look of resignation and slowly shook his head. “Oh, I’m not telling them. I’ll pass up the chance at a few hundred bucks and bragging rights for it to be something I can taunt you about forever.”

“Is that a threat of blackmail, agent?”

“Possibly. But I mainly just want to be able to annoy you with cat puns. For instance, I’m glad you were able to stop the purr-pretators of the attack on the Skrulls.

Fury stood up. “We’re done here.”

 

 

Over the decades, Fury’s office slowly filled with cat apparel. For Christmas, Coulson got him a crazy cat man sweater and hid cans of tuna around his office as a “Christmas surprise.” When Fury was nominated to become director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson got him a custom-made eye patch embroidered with a cat nose and whiskers along with the promise that no, he would not bring this up at his confirmation hearing.

Even as time passed and the tone of S.H.I.E.L.D. grew more serious, little cat references would show up everywhere. There was no escape. Even after Coulson literally _died_ , it kept coming. Coulson had written him a note after the Tahiti project, thanking him for a variety of things, the letter mailed with a cat stamp.

Fury rolled his eyes and wrote back. “Rest up, Agent. A cat only has nine lives.”


End file.
